Enter the Batman
by Jethro25
Summary: The League suffers a serious setback when the vast majority of them are captured in a raid upon a heretofore unknown 33.1 facility & Chloe is shot when a Lexcorp team attacks Watchtower. Ollie, Chloe, & Bruce Not part of JL yet must team up & free them
1. Chapter 1

**Enter the Batman**

**Chapter One – Newfoundland, 33.1**

Chloe Sullivan sat in front of the main monitor in her little techno-wonderland, somewhere in downtown Metropolis. She had a cup of coffee from MetroBeans sitting on a separate table, near her right elbow, close enough for her to reach it easily, yet far enough away that she had no need to worry about spilling it on her expensive equipment. Oliver had just arranged a serious upgrade for her, importing a new processor he'd purchased from WayneTech, which she'd wasted no time installing. It would boost her computing power by nearly half. No easy feat considering how good the equipment already was.

Her role as Watchtower for the Justice League was always important, but the current operation was one of the biggest, and most important, that they'd run in quite some time. Victor had picked up a few whispers in Los Angeles about a secret Luthorcorp facility somewhere in Eastern Canada. It had taken the better part of a week, but Chloe had managed to track a supply chain of integral products, which led them to an isolated facility in northern Newfoundland. Green Arrow and the entire team, minus Boy Scout, were going in to take a look around, and to shut it down, if necessary.

She glanced at the screen. They were just a few minutes from initial contact. She double-checked that both of the Queen Industries satellites she'd tasked to watch over the installation were set and ready. She'd already made close-up photographic and infared sweeps of the place for the last two days. Current count was the same as those first two, fourteen people on-site, six of them grouped closely, but not together, in what appeared to be a bank of cells. That left eight Lexcorp staff, assuming that those first six heat signatures were indeed metahumans being held and "studied".

Suddenly, her earpiece crackled once, and then Green Arrow's voice, changed from Oliver's by the voice masker, sounded. "Green Arrow to Watchtower. We'll be on-site in two minutes. Is everything still looking good Watchtower?"

"That's affirmative," she answered. "Fourteen heat signatures, six in the northeast corner, four outside in a standard patrol pattern. The other four are spread throughout the facility."

"Looks like nothing has changed." That was Victor's voice.

"They haven't seen us coming," A.C. put in.

"And they won't see me at all," from Bart.

"Just stick to the plan," Green Arrow said. "Three teams. Impulse takes out the guards outside. Canary and I will take out the scientists and any guards inside. A.C. and Cyborg will make their way to the holding cells. Use caution when you try to free the prisoners. Lexcorp will have plenty of security in place."

Chloe spoke up again. "And once you've taken care of the scientists, you'll hook up that little uplink device I gave you, and I'll download the entire database of the facility to my backup machine here at Watchtower."

"Copy that," Green Arrow said. "Let's move out."

Chloe watched via satellite feed as her team moved into the facility. All four of the external guards stopped moving at very nearly the same second. They never stood a chance against someone with Bart's abilities. The others all began moving into the facility.

"It's hot as hell in here," A.C. said a moment later.

"Keep your eye on the ball, man," Cyborg said as the two of them peeled off from Canary and Green Arrow, moving northeast.

"Something is wrong here," Green Arrow said.

"Let's just get the job done and get out, quickly," Canary replied.

Something tickled at the back of Chloe's mind, but she couldn't quite piece it together. She furrowed her brow, working hard, using all her intellect to find the elusive clue. She watched as the three teams moved, Bart circling outside the facility, maintaining a perimeter.

"It's like a damned hothouse," A.C. said again, his voice much lower this time.

Suddenly, the realization hit her. "Cyborg," she said, "just how hot is it in there?"

"Is that the most important question right now?" Victor asked.

"Yes," Chloe said. "How hot?"

There was a brief pause before Victor said, "Ninety-nine degrees."

"Oh, crap," she said. "G.A…."

"Yeah," Ollie said. "I understand. It's a damned trap. There's a hell of a lot more of them here than we thought. Pull back, now."

Chloe could only listen as all hell erupted. What sounded like plenty of gunfire, and other weapons, probably energy weapons judging by the sound, her team yelling, fighting, trying to get back to one another.

"Damn it," Victor called out, "A.C. is down."

"Canary too," Oliver said. "One of their teams has her, I'm circling back now. I'll get her free."

Unable to reach Bart, who was unusually still , and surrounded by a good dozen heat signatures, Chloe made a decision. "G.A., I'm sending you Boy Scout."

"Good call," Oliver responded. "Tell him to haul ass!"

She tapped a key and called Clark's cell. He picked up on the second ring.

"I'm kind of busy right now, Chloe."

"Boy Scout," she said, using his code name to tell him, without a long explanation, that the call was mission related. "The team is trapped in the 33.1 facility in Newfoundland. Canary, A.C. and Impulse are down. They need you there now."

"On my way," Clark said. The blip from the transponder in his, now active, communicator vanished from Metropolis, only to reappear some 1,600 miles away in Newfoundland eleven seconds later. It never ceased to amaze her that when they chose to, Clark and Bart could both run so fast that they could literally run across water.

"External security team disabled," Clark said into his communicator. "Impulse down but stable. Moving inside."

Chloe realized that she was biting her fingernails. There were more sounds of combat, and suddenly, nothing. The blips from all six of the team's communicators suddenly went off the grid. "Guys, sit-rep." She waited a moment. "G.A.? Cyborg? Boy Scout? …..Come on, somebody talk to me."

What had gone wrong? She started to type furiously, sending orders to the satellites, attempting to re-route them, get a different angle, maybe punch through whatever interference was now blocking their signals.

BOOOOOM! The reinforced door to Watchtower exploded inward. A team of armed men, all dressed in tac suits came charging through the door. The first lifted a pistol of some sort and fired at her as she threw herself out of her chair and to the floor. A damned trap was right. It was a trap for all of them. As she rolled away, she heard a "tink" sound and saw the tiny dart that had just missed her roll away from her chair. She scampered around the back of her machine, trying to push it over, block them and hopefully damage the system enough that they wouldn't be able to get anything from it.

Before she could manage it, two men swarmed around, grabbing her from either side and pulling her up and away from the machine. Another was now sitting in her chair attempting to get through the firewall. She'd managed to log herself out with a quick keystroke, meaning they would have to crack the system to get anything. It would be tough, but doable.

The men sat her roughly in another desk chair. A pair of plastic zip-ties secured her wrists to it. Another man stuck his head out into the hall and said, "We're clear. We've secured her."

A familiar face, beneath a mass of red hair, came toward her through the throng.

"Chloe, you'll save yourself a lot of pain if you give me the passwords to access your system."

"Go to hell, Tess," Chloe said.

"We'll get in eventually anyway," Tess reasoned with her. "Why suffer all that pain, and humiliation to protect what will eventually be laid bare regardless?"

Chloe bit back the acid response that wanted to leap from her lips. She simply looked away. They might torture her, or even kill her, but she would heal, sooner or later. What she wouldn't do was make it easier for Tess to get all of her files.

"Do it," Tess said.

A man stepped forward, tapping a large syringe filled with some sort of amber colored fluid.  
Another man grabbed her arm, pushing back the sleeve of her sweater. She would have kicked him, but they'd secured her ankles to the chair with zip-ties as well. The man jabbed the syringe into her arm and depressed the plunger, emptying whatever that fluid had been into her vein.

It took only a few seconds for her head to start going fuzzy. She blinked twice to clear her vision.

"It acts fast, doesn't it?" Tess smiled. "It's an experimental drug developed by the C.I.A." Her voice seemed strange to Chloe's ears, the pitch going up and down, the words elongating. "In a few more seconds, you're going to answer any question I ask."

Chloe shook her head, trying to clear the gathering cobwebs from her mind. "No," she said, but even she didn't believe she could resist.

"There is some bad news, I'm afraid," Tess said. "In roughly seventy percent of the cases where this drug is used, the subject dies within a few hours."

There was another great crash, from somewhere behind her, but Chloe couldn't turn to see what it was. Suddenly, there was a great din, the men all firing, Tess shouting orders. Had one of the team come to save her? That didn't seem likely, but she had trouble understanding why. There was another loud boom, though not as loud as the first one, and then Tess was in front of her, a gun in her hand. She looked scared, Chloe thought, but of what? The gun in her hand went off and Chloe felt a white-hot searing pain in her chest. Tess fell in front of her.

She was struggling to breathe. A face swam into her rapidly dimming view. The drugs must really be doing a number on her. Her last thought as she sank into unconsciousness was that the man who'd come to her rescue was actually a giant bat.

In Newfoundland, the battle was drawing to a close. Boy Scout lay upon the ground, huddling in on himself, his body wracked with pain. Several tiny green darts stuck out of his skin. Dinah lay unconscious a few feet away, one of the men standing over her, a rifle pointed at her head. Another man stood just a few feet away, a small lead box in his hand, the top open, a small chunk of glowing green kryptonite sapping all of his strength.

In the distance, he could hear footsteps growing closer, a purposeful stride. A pair of shiny black boots stopped just in front of him. He looked up, just as the man wearing those boots knelt down. He was shocked at the familiar face, and the bald head. "Hello Clark," Lex said with a sinister smile, "welcome to Newfoundland."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two – Waking up in a Strange Place **

Chloe's eyelids fluttered once, and then again, before she opened them. She was lying on her back, in what certainly seemed to be the most comfortable bed ever. There was very little doubt that the pillow her head rested on was goose down. She took a moment to take in her surroundings. There was a gauzy white canopy over the bed. The headboard and bedposts were mahogany.

She wanted to get up, but her body, especially her limbs, was still catching up, far too weak for her to stand, or even sit up yet. The room was warm. There was a nice fire burning in the fireplace across the way.

Half the far wall was bookshelves, built in. Her eyes wouldn't focus quite well enough yet for her to make out the titles of the books, but they certainly seemed to be old, very old. She was regaining her senses enough now that she had begun to wonder just where she was, and how she'd gotten there.

The last thing she remembered was sitting down with her coffee to get ready for the mission. The mission! The memories came flooding back, the mission, her team walking into a trap, the breach at Watchtower, being shot. It dawned on her that a place this beautiful, with all these expensive furnishings, she could be in the Luthor Mansion. "Tess," she growled.

At that very moment, the door opened, and she struggled to at least be able to sit up, but it wasn't Tess, nor the guards she might have expected. Instead, the man who entered was the epitome of a Gentleman's Gentleman. He was tall and slender, with a head of silvery-white hair. His smile when he saw she was awake was near enough to make her want to smile back in kind. He was carrying a tray with what appeared to be a cup of some hot beverage, judging by the steam wafting from it, and unless her sense of smell much deceived her, there was a plate of eggs and bacon as well.

"Here, let me help you. Miss," the man said, his English accent surprising her for some reason, as he set the tray on an overstuffed chair nearby. He moved to her, gently helping her get into a sitting position. Her mind told her that she shouldn't trust him, that it would all turn out to be some trick designed by Tess to get her to give up her files on the team, but every instinct told her that she should wait and see.

"Thank you," she said as he arranged the pillows behind her back.

He smiled that smile again. "My pleasure, Miss."

She tucked a few stray blonde hairs back behind her ear and bit her bottom lip.

He clearly noticed, and understood. "I'm sure you must have questions," and before she could answer, he added, "and you must be famished."

"I am actually," she said. "And I do."

He picked up the tray and settled it onto her lap. "Why don't we start with this," he said. I hope you like omelets. This one is western, ham, onions, peppers, cheddar, and mushrooms. The tea is Earl Grey, however, I also brought up a spare mug and a pot of coffee as well."

At her confused look he added, "It is on a cart just outside the door." She nodded. In addition to the omelet and the crisp bacon, there were a half-dozen wedges of what seemed to be rye toast spread with butter. There was even a small vase with a single short-stemmed red rose.

"The tea will be good with breakfast, but I'll definitely need coffee after," she said before starting with a wedge of toast.

The man settled into the overstuffed chair while she ate.

"This is delicious," she told him after sampling the omelet. He smiled. "I'm sorry," she said, dabbing her lips with what appeared to be a white silk napkin, "but I don't know your name."

"I am Alfred, Miss," he answered. "If you need anything at all while you are here, just press that little button on the nightstand next to the bed, and I shall endeavor to aid you post haste."

She smiled at that. "Okay," she said. "Just Alfred?"

"My surname is Pennyworth."

She nodded. "And just where is here, Alfred?"

"You are in Gotham City, Miss. Wayne Manor, to be precise."

She almost choked on a bite of her toast, quickly sipping some of her tea to calm the fit of coughing. Alfred waited patiently.

When the coughing had subsided a bit, she said, "Gotham is a long way from Metropolis. Just how did I get here?"

"Why, Master Wayne brought you, after he found you in a distressing situation at Metropolis General Hospital."

"A distressing situation?" she tried to sound as though she didn't understand what he meant, but his smile, for the first time a bit condescending, told her he knew better.

"You were dead for roughly thirteen hours, and asleep for the last twenty," he said.

"Oh that," she said. She took another bite of the omelet and another realization hit her while she chewed. She swallowed and said, "You said Wayne Manor, and Master Bruce, as in Bruce Wayne?"

Alfred nodded, his smile back to being more kindly, the condescension replaced once more with warmth.

"And just how did Bruce Wayne happen to be in the MetGen morgue?"

"I was going to dig the bullet out of your chest and run a ballistics test, until I realized you had a pulse." She looked up to see him standing in the doorway. He was tall, a little over six feet, which left him a few inches shorter than Clark. He wore a pair of dark grey slacks and a black polo shirt. The fabric of the shirtsleeves strained with the bulge of his biceps as he stood with his arms crossed. He had dark hair, slightly wavy, with hazel eyes, and a face that might well have made her swoon had she not been sitting with her back against the headboard.

She cleared her throat and took another sip of tea, giving her a few seconds to compose herself. When she did speak, she was proud of the calm tone of her voice. "Do you do that often, Mr. Wayne, dig bullets out of dead bodies and run forensic tests?"

He smiled, and despite the fact that the smile never actually reached his eyes, she felt her pulse quicken by twenty beats, or so. "No," he said. "Not too often, but in your case, I felt I owed it to you to track down the woman who killed you."

"Tess," she growled again, before the words sunk in. Wow, she really was slow getting going today. "How did you know I was shot by a woman?"

Again the smile that wasn't really a smile. "Because I was there."

She thought back. Something had happened just after they drugged her. Someone had broken through the window, fought Tess's team. At the time, she'd thought it was one of her team. She wasn't thinking clearly then. An image swam up from the dark recesses of her mind. A man with dark wings and the ears of a bat.

"You were there," she said in a faltering voice. "You're the Batman." That last was in a near whisper.

"And you are Watchtower, techie and mission coordinator for the Justice League." By his obvious lack of surprise, it was clear that Alfred knew all of this as well.

She saw no real advantage in denying what he clearly already knew. Besides, if she wanted to rescue the team, she'd need all the allies she could find. Perhaps he'd be one. "They were after the files in my system. They didn't get them did they?"

"No," he said. "I wiped the whole system."

He did what? She could feel the blood drain from her face. All her files, everything.

"Relax," he said, pulling what looked like a flash drive from his pocket. "I backed it all up on here first."

She simply shook her head. It wasn't possible. Her Watchtower system had more than a terabyte of data. No flash drive in the world could hold that much. She told him so.

"You might be surprised," he said. "I'm going to go back to your place this evening, have another look around. Do you want me to pick anything up for you?"

She did, some clothing at least, and she told him so.

"When I get back, we'll talk about finding a way to free your team from Luthor." With that, he turned and left.

The teacup slipped from her fingers, spilling the small mouthful of tea that remained on the comforter. "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry," she said, looking at Alfred.

"Not to worry, Miss," he said. "I have no doubt that the stain will come out. Enjoy the rest of your breakfast, and ring me if you need anything else." He retrieved the cart from the hall and poured her a cup of coffee before leaving. She wasn't sure why, but she was a bit surprised when he left the door open just a crack, as if to say that she welcome to both her privacy and her right to leave the room when she wished.

She was almost too flabbergasted by the whole scene to finish her breakfast, almost.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three – Watchtower is Empty**

It had taken him the better part of two days, but Oliver made it back to Metropolis. Lexcorp men had seized their plane, which forced him to take other steps. He'd realized during the fight at 33.1 that the Lexcorp security forces were tracking them through their own Comm units, so he'd dumped his and slipped away in the confusion when they turned their full attention on Boy Scout. He felt bad leaving his team behind, but he needed to get back and check on Chloe. Together, they'd find a way to get the others out.

He hadn't shaved in two days, and a bottle of hair coloring had left his normally golden locks a muddy brown. He'd stashed his costume and weapons, traded a hundred dollars to a street person for his ratty boots and a long trench coat with more holes than a block of Swiss cheese.

Peering out from the end of an alley, he decided that the coast was clear. He crossed to a pay phone on the corner and picked it up. He called Chloe again. Still no answer. He put in another coin and called Lois at the Planet. Voice mail.

"Lois," he said after the beep, "it's your old boyfriend. I'm in trouble. Be very careful. I'll get in touch with you soon." He hung up and started moving, taking a moment to check over his shoulder, hoping to slip into the darkness of the Metropolis night. The darkness was his friend.

He made his way to Watchtower, criss-crossing through the Metropolis streets, ever watchful for a tail. When he'd finally convinced himself that there was indeed no one following him, he made his way into Chloe's building and up to the top. The damage from the explosion that had breached the doors was obvious. He flattened himself against the wall and peeked inside.

The stained glass window on the far wall had been shattered as well. Judging from the the spread of the glass across the floor inside, someone had crashed in, not out. He slipped inside and scanned the room again. Nothing. His eyes moved over the monitor. It was dark, but the lights were on. Maybe Chloe had trashed the system, or the invaders had.

His eyes continued on until they found the overturned chair. The chair didn't bother him so much as the obvious pool of dried blood. His heart clenched in his chest. Chloe. He stumbled once as he moved to the chair. The cloth of the chair was also covered in blood. His breath was coming in ragged gasps. He leaned on the edge of a nearby desk to help support him.

He'd been training himself for years to be the Green Arrow, and for the last three he'd been out on the streets. Those instincts, honed to near enough a razor's edge, told him then that he wasn't alone. He'd checked the room, twice. How did he miss the intruder? He regretted having hidden his costume and weapons. His eyes fell upon a Bic pen, without a cap laying on the desk. He slowly turned, palming the pen as he did. It wasn't much of a weapon, but better than nothing.

He was surprised when his eyes fell upon the empty doorway. There was nothing there, no one. Clearly, his nerves were shot. He'd barely slept in the last seventy-two hours. He rubbed his eyes with one hand and set the pen back on the desk and started to move toward the door. "I'll start with MetGen. If Chloe isn't dead, she'll likely be there."

He only managed a single step toward the doorway when a deep, raspy voice came from the shadows behind him. "She's not there. And she's not dead…anymore."

He turned, slowly. Whoever it was, he'd had more than enough time to kill Oliver, or hit him with a tazer, or whatever else he might have wanted to do. He still didn't see anyone, until a large man in a black suit, with a long scalloped black cape stepped forward. His face, all except his mouth and jaw were covered in a black cowl. Oliver simply shook his head. He'd seen the Batman pull that particular trick before, but he still had no idea how he did it.

"You want to tell me what happened here?" Oliver asked, his voice tired.

"A Lexcorp Tactical Team led by Tess Mercer assaulted this place. The young woman who was here at the time was drugged, and eventually shot in the chest by Mercer." Oliver winced at that. He knew Chloe would get better, but the pain must have been excruciating.

"You were here for it?"

"I took out the Tac Team, including Mercer, though I was bit too late on that. By the time I got Miss Sullivan to MetGen and returned, they were gone. No police, so I assume it was another Luthor team."

"Where is Chloe now?" 

"Gotham. I returned to collect forensic evidence from her body, only to find that she had a weak, thready pulse, and her wound was almost healed. She's a metahuman." It wasn't a question. Oliver just nodded.

"You should come with me. Luthor has this place under surveillance. He's looking for you."

"I assume," Oliver replied, "since no new Tac Teams have come charging in, that you disabled the surveillance." A tiny smirk, little more than a twitch at the corner of his lips was the Batman's only response.

"I need to get some equipment from my place," Oliver said.

"I emptied out your hidden room earlier this evening. Everything you might need is already loaded up on my plane."

"How did you get past my security system?" Again, the tiny smirk was his only answer.

Oliver was exhausted, but he wasn't about to just let the Batman order him around. At the least, he intended to get some answers. "When I approached you in Gotham last year, you declined to join the League. Why are you here now?"

"I found out about some serious weapons tech being moved through a Luthor subsidiary, through Gotham. I came to Metropolis to investigate. I found a safe in Tess Mercer's office, hidden under a false portion of the floor. There was a file, a plan for the assault on this place. I came over to stop it."

"You took my equipment from my place? How did you know who I was?"

"It wasn't all that hard to find out, once I started digging. Not you, nor any of the others, Stone, Kent, Allen. Lance, Curry, Sullivan." Oliver sighed. He'd thought their secrets were well hidden. Clearly, not well enough to keep them from the Batman.

"So, what now?"

"You come back to Gotham with me. Between the two of us and Miss Sullivan, we come up with a plan to retrieve your team."

"Does this mean you're with us now?"

"It means, nothing good can come from them being held by Lex Luthor. Anything else we can discuss later. Now, let's move." The Batman had a motorcycle hidden in an alleyway a block over. It was one tricked out ride. Any other time, Ollie would have loved to give it a go himself. On this night, he just climbed on behind the Bat and held on.

Ten minutes later they were outside Metropolis and flying, at over 120 mph. It didn't take long to figure out where they were headed. The plane he'd mentioned was hidden in the field behind the Kent barn. It had two seats in the cockpit, though Ollie's seat in the back was a bit cramped. There was enough of a storage space in the back for the bike to be rolled right in, almost as if it had been designed that way.

Two minutes later they were rising straight up from the ground on jets of air. VTOL. Ollie was impressed. And then they were rocketing east toward Gotham at near enough 1,500 mph. The trip took less than thirty minutes, and Ollie slept through three quarters of it.


End file.
